Tempest in the Tea Leaves
A Fortune Teller Mystery, No 1
Kari Lee Townsend

Berkley Prime Crime
August 2011/ ISBN 978-0-425-24275-9
Mystery / Cozy
Amazon

Reviewed by Laura Hinds

Sunny Meadows has left the bright lights of New York to live in the small town of Divinity, New York, and pursue her dream of working as a psychic reader. Her favorite method is to read her client’s tea leaves. She has been lucky enough to use her trust fund to buy “Vicky,” a Victorian house that the locals have long believed to be haunted. Vicky comes complete with a mysterious white cat with the blackest eyes Sunny has ever seen.

Sunny’s luck takes a turn for the worse when her first client, the town librarian, Amanda Robbins, is murdered, just as Sunny saw in her reading. The local police, specifically Detective Mitch Stone, casts a wary eye at Sunny’s profession and casts her in the role as lead suspect. How can Sunny find a way to clear her name, find the real killer, and avoid falling head over heels for the handsome detective?

This is the first book in this new series by author Kari Lee Townsend, and I am sure that if she had her own tea leaves read, they would point to a date with fate as a best-selling cozy mystery author with many books yet to come. Townsend has done a fantastic job with this debut, bringing interesting new characters to life, treating readers to tea-leaf-reading mini-lessons, and inviting us into a typical small town with several unexpected quirks. We not only get to follow Sunny’s adjustment to living in Divinity, but to follow the townspeople’s adjustment to Sunny.

When her rather uptight parents visit, we get a good glimpse into her family life, and that explains why she set out on her own to prove herself. I really enjoyed getting to know Sunny, and would like to have her for a real-life friend. I love the cat, Morty, as well, and hope he continues to be featured prominently in future books. As a bonus, there are more than a few romantic sparks flying, and the book is funny too!

Mystery lovers, those with an interest in the psychic world, cat fanciers, and tea drinkers alike will all be thrilled with this new series. It is a good read for teens on up, great for any time of year, and if you are like me, you’ll want to have some loose tea and a special tea cup on hand to try out Sunny’s methods for yourself.

Reviews of other titles in this series

Tempest in the Tea Leaves #1 [review]
Corpse in the Crystal Ball #2 [review]
 Trouble in the Tarot #3 [review]